Today the internet, newspapers and TV will be full of stories marking the one year anniversary of the US stock market (as measured by the S&P 500) reaching its low point. We'll hear that the index is 68% higher today than it was 12 months ago. Hooray for investors! - maybe. The pros/cons of market-timing [...]
t's tough not to appreciate the irony in this week's offerings from MarketWatch. On Feb 26th Chuck Jaffe wrote his weekly "Stupid Investment of the Week" column only to be followed on Mar 1st by John Spence's column about an exchange-traded fund ("ETF") benchmarked to the airline industry - Claymore/NYSE Arca Airline ETF. The offering [...]
On Feb 23rd Senator Ron Wyden (D - Oregon) and Senator Judd Gregg (R - New Hampshire) introduced the "Bipartisan Tax Fairness and Simplification Act of 2010" to overhaul what they dubbed a "broken" tax system. Among other provisions the bill would preclude the issuance of tax-exempt (i.e. muni) bonds beginning in 2011 while changing [...]
In a largely symbolic move The Fed yesterday increased the Discount Rate from 0.50% to 0.75%. Historically the Discount Rate is one of three main policy tools used to manipulate monetary policy. The move is considered symbolic as it's an indicator of things to come. In and of itself the move has no meaningful economic [...]
On the heels of "Cash for Clunkers" comes "Cash for Appliances" - a program funded with $300 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The plan is straightforward - give taxpayers a rebate for upgrading to energy efficient equipment. Although funded with Federal money each state sets the rules for qualifying equipment, [...]
News reports of the last couple of weeks touted the financial troubles of Greece. As their debt to GDP ratio rises to historic and worrisome levels there's a real chance of default on sovereign debt. While pundits opine the implications on the global economic and political landscape one can't help but notice the similarities of [...]
Friends and clients alike love to tweak us at Apollo - calling us a shill for the Republicans. We suppose that's fair. After all we tend to side with the right on economic issues. Yet as we like to point out commonality or correlation doesn't necessarily equate to causation or certainty. But we digress... If [...]
The pop culture element of the financial world has dubbed these last ten years as The Lost Decade – a means of describing the roughly 10% drop in the S&P 500 during the timeframe. It’s a lament to seemingly better times like the late 90s when UselessCompany.com or anything else with the ubiquitous dot-com label [...]
Some interesting nuggets of info from the recently released "Wealth and Values" survey from PNC Wealth Management (a unit of The PNC Financial Services Group): wealthy Americans have become more concerned over the last two years that their children are becoming spoiled 35% believe their children are "too spoiled by money and have too many [...]
President Obama captivated the nation with his message of Hope. He rode it to victory in the race for The White House. Unfortunately his Hope has been a failure. Unemployment remains at unpalatable levels, tax hikes are on the way, politically motivated rather than economically relevant policies await the economy and health care, etc. It's [...]